Presentations | BEP Dev (9to5English)

BEP 233 – English for Conferences 1: Opening Presentation

Business English, Communication, Presentations / June 23, 2013

Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on hosting a conference in English.

If you’ve ever had to play host, for a conference, a meeting, a fundraiser, or any other type of event, you know it’s a lot of work. There’s months of planning and preparation, all for a single day or single weekend. And you want things to be perfect. You want the attendees to have a fabulous time. You want no problems or glitches.

Of course, it rarely works out that way. There are always problems to solve, but as the host, you can’t lose your cool. You’re the face of the event, and you’ve got to smile and make sure everyone has a great time. So, how can you do that?

Today we’ll look at some of the techniques you need to be a great host. In particular, we’ll focus on giving an opening address to kick off a conference or other event. We will learn how to officially welcome people, introduce the theme, outline goals and events, and introduce a speaker.

In the dialog, you’ll hear the official start to a conference that has brought together a company’s HR personnel from throughout the American midwest. The opening address is being delivered by Amy, the company’s VP of Human Resources in Chicago. You will hear the techniques Amy uses as host of the conference.

Listening Questions

1. What is the first goal of the conference that Amy mentions?
2. What are some of the events in Day 1 of the conference?
3. What kind of information does Amy give about the keynote speaker?

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BEP 230 – Presenting in English: Freestyle Q&A (2)

Business English, Communication, Presentations / May 5, 2013

In today’s Business English lesson, we continue our look at how to handle questions during your business English presentation.

Have you ever delivered a presentation to a quiet and happy audience that accepts everything you say and applauds at the end? Probably not. It doesn’t matter whether you’re presenting to a possible client, at a staff meeting, to a group of senior executives, or during a professional development event. Your audience will likely ask you questions throughout your presentation.

No matter how well you prepare, you’re going to have to think on your feet. That means you’ll have to step outside what you’ve rehearsed and deal with the questions as they come. You might know the answer, but then again you might not. The question might be about something you planned to talk about, but it might not. Your presentation will succeed or fail not just on how pretty your PowerPoint slides are, but on how well you handle the audience and their questions. And that’s what we’re looking at in this lesson.

The techniques we’ll hear today include clarifying a question, using a question to jump ahead in your presentation, and evading a difficult question. We’ll also learn how to separate multiple questions into parts as well as how to admit we don’t know the answer to a question.

In the dialog, we rejoin the publishing company where Amy is giving a presentation to senior executives, including Brenda and Dennis. Amy is explaining a potential overseas partnership with two Korean companies. Brenda and Dennis are asking her plenty of tough questions.

Listening Questions

1. What exactly is Brenda worried about at the start of the dialog?
2. How does Amy respond to Dennis’s question about licensing rights and terms?
3. Which question does Amy say she doesn’t have enough information to answer?

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BEP 229 – Presenting in English: Freestyle Q&A (1)

Business English, Communication, Presentations / April 28, 2013

Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on handling questions during a presentation in English.

So you’ve planned your presentation carefully and you’ve rehearsed it in front of the mirror. You walk into the room, you bring up your first slide, and you begin. But you’ve hardly finished your introduction when someone throws out a question. How do you deal with it?

You’d better be ready for this situation, because you know it’s coming. How often do people actually wait for you to finish before politely raising their hands and asking you questions? It just doesn’t happen. So you need to learn how to respond on the fly. You need to read the situation and react accordingly. Your presentation isn’t ruined if you know the right things to say and do.

Today we’ll look at some of the techniques we can use to handle questions and keep our presentation flowing. These techniques include anticipating questions before they’re asked, using a question to transition to another point, and buying time. We’ll also learn about dismissing a question that you’ve already answered and redirecting a question to the entire group.

In the dialog, we’ll hear part of a meeting in a publishing company. Amy is giving a presentation about a potential overseas partnership. Brenda and Dennis, two senior managers, are asking Amy some tough questions along the way.

Listening Questions

1. What does Amy anticipate that the audience might be wondering about?
2. Which topic does Amy have to ”˜buy time’ for before talking about it?
3. When Brenda asks about priorities, how does Amy deal with the question?

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BEP 213 – Presentation English: Presenting Visuals (2)

Business English, ESL Podcast, Presentations / July 22, 2012

In this Business English Pod lesson, we continue our look at brining your visuals to life during a presentation in English.

Have you ever had to stare at a complicated chart and wished the presenter would just give you the main points? Or have you had someone try to explain a chart and tell you exactly what you can already see yourself? There are better ways to handle visual information and that’s what we’re going to look at in this lesson.

Charts and graphs are very useful for presenting information, especially numbers. But you must learn to use them carefully. If you don’t, your presentation might not have the effect you want. That might mean it’s seen as boring, but it could also mean that you fail to convince someone of your idea.

So how can we use visuals successfully? How can we bring them to life? Well, last week we looked at some ways to engage your audience using analogies and rhetorical questions. This week we’re going to introduce some more useful techniques, including using descriptive language and stating the gist of a graph. We’ll also learn how to set up a new visual, interpret a visual, and state the implications of information.

In today’s dialog, we rejoin David, a manager seeking support for his idea to consolidate logistics by building a new facility in China. In our last episode, we heard David introduce his plan to the finance department. Today, David will be presenting more information and visuals to support his plan.

Listening Questions

1. Why does David talk about the cost of warehousing and shipping?
2. What does the cost benefit analysis chart show?
3. What does Alison say about the future of the company?

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BEP 212 – Presentation English: Presenting Visuals (1)

Business English, ESL Podcast, Presentations / July 15, 2012

In this Business English Pod lesson, we look at how to bring your visuals to life in a presentation in English.

We’ve all sat through some pretty boring presentations. And in those presentations, we’ve all seen complex charts and graphs that tell us either way too much or nothing at all. For the most part, visuals aren’t naturally interesting or informative. It’s what we do with them that is important.

You can’t just put a graph on a screen and then explain each point on the graph. And you can’t put up a table of figures and then read out each column and row. What you really need to do is tell the story of the data and to bring the visuals to life. What should people focus on? What is the important number on the screen? What does the graph actually tell us?

Bringing visuals to life is necessary if you want to give effective presentations. We’ll look at how to do this today. In this lesson, we’ll cover several important functions, including using analogy, defining terms, using rhetorical questions, and highlighting key numbers.

You will hear David, an engineer in a manufacturing company. He’s giving a presentation to members of the finance department. His purpose is to explain a new plan that he hopes to get financed.

Listening Questions

1. Why does David ask the listeners about traveling to work?
2. Which important term does David define for the listeners?
3. What is David’s idea for shipping?

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